February 8, 2017

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the grey, mild, foggy, mysterious island of Nantucket! Great to be with you once again on a very early Wednesday morning, The Eighth Day of February, 2017; still dark ‘down on the docks’ of Hyannis Port. Sun to wake in a half hour or so, hopefully like much of this nation’s citizenry. Asleep on so many different levels it is hard to quantify. The great poet, musician, guitarist extraordinaire and former lead singer for the once dominant sound of rock and roll’s “Dire Straits”, wrote this song below deck that reigned the radio waves in the eighties, both here in the U.S. and Great Britain; not to mention ‘down under’, i.e. Australia and New Zealand. Hello! He wrote one song that one does not experience on the corporate ‘clear’ channel monopoly anymore, and for good reason. These prophetic and quite accurate lyrics pretty much sum up the whole darn shooting match now don’t they?

Illegitimi non carborundum!

(translation: ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down!’)

with…

“Industrial Disease”

“Warning lights are flashing down at quality control, somebody threw a spanner and they threw him in a hole; there’s rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town, somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down, there’s a meeting in the boardroom they’re trying to trace the smell, there’s leaking in the washroom, there’s a sneak in personnel, somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze, ‘goodness me, could this be industrial disease?

The caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post, they’re refusing to be pacified, it’s him they blame the most. The watchdog’s got rabies, the foreman’s got fleas and everyone’s concerned about industrial disease. There’s panic on the switchboard tongues are tied in knots; some come out in sympathy some come out in spots, some blame the management some the employees and everybody knows it’s the Industrial Disease.

The workforce is disgusted downs tools and walks, innocence is injured, experience just talks… Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees that these are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze. On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse, philosophy is useless, theology worse, history boils over, there’s an economic freeze, sociologists invent words like…,

INDUSTRIAL DISEASE

Doctor Parkinson declared, ‘I’m not surprised to SEA you here, you’ve got smoker’s cough from smoking, brewer’s droop from drinking beer. I don’t know how you came to get those Betty Davis knees, but worst of all young man you’ve got Industrial Disease. He wrote me a prescription, ‘you are depressed, but I’m glad you came to see me to get this off your chest! Come back and see me later, next patient please, send in another victim of Industrial Disease…

Splendid!

I’m going down to Speaker’s Corner, I’m thunderstruck…,

they got free speech and tourists, police in trucks;

two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong. There’s a protest singer singing a protest song;